Thin Clients versus PCs

Takeaway:
Jonathan Yarden makes the argument that the use of thin clients in place of Windows PCs could improve your security.

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When it comes to reliability and security, few people will argue that personal computing is at its peak. And it really doesn't matter what operating system or application software a PC runs; there will always be software flaws with the potential to cause problems.

Connect a few million PCs installed with buggy, unmaintained software to a network or the Internet, and you've got a much larger problem. Corporate networks protected by firewalls help, but even the best firewall can't stop problems from spreading inside networks.

For areas where high-security computer access is a necessity, a centralized approach to access control and authorization may be the solution.

Many will argue that the mainframe era, despite the relatively simple character-based user interface, was a better paradigm for secure and reliable computing. While centralized, session-based computing that uses character terminals is somewhat dated, it remains stubbornly reliable, particularly when security is a more important factor than usability.

However, thin client computing makes it possible to combine the best of the mainframe terminal approach with the graphical interface required by modern software. You can apply thin client concepts to regular computers running specific software that provides a remote graphical desktop on a centralized system. A number of different methods and protocols are available, and the thin client concept, which uses session-based graphical desktops, offers corporations both security and usability.

Because most wide-scale security incidents occur on Windows machines, Windows thin clients could play an important role in an organization's network. Originally developed to provide remote Windows access, thin clients' protocols and concepts can help companies greatly improve Windows security.

However, I'm not advocating the wholesale replacement of Windows PCs with thin clients. What I am suggesting is that thin clients can improve overall security for specific purposes, especially when it comes to desktop consistency.

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